poormanray 0.4.0

A minimal alternative to Ray for distributed data processing on EC2 instances

poormanray

A minimal alternative to Ray for distributed data processing on EC2 instances. Manage clusters, run commands, and distribute jobs without the complexity of a full Ray deployment.

Installation

Requires Python 3.11+.

# Install as a CLI tool (recommended)
uv tool install poormanray

# Or install as a library
uv pip install poormanray
pip install poormanray

Quick Start

# Create a cluster of 5 instances
pmr create --name mycluster --number 5 --instance-type i4i.2xlarge

# If you need an Ai2 project tag, use either --project...
pmr create --name mycluster --project my-ai2-project --number 5
# ...or name@project syntax:
pmr create --name mycluster@my-ai2-project --number 5

# List instances in the cluster
pmr list --name mycluster

# Run a command on all instances
pmr run --name mycluster --command "echo 'Hello from $(hostname)'"

# Terminate the cluster when done
pmr terminate --name mycluster

Prerequisites

• AWS credentials configured via:
  • Environment variables (AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)
  • AWS CLI (aws configure)
  • Credentials file (~/.aws/credentials)
• SSH key pair in ~/.ssh/ (id_rsa, id_ed25519, etc.)

Project Selection (--project or name@project)

When creating instances, you can optionally set an Ai2 project tag in two equivalent ways:

# Explicit flag
pmr create --name mycluster --project my-ai2-project

# Inline syntax in --name (split on the first @)
pmr create --name mycluster@my-ai2-project

Rules enforced by the CLI:

• --name is required and must be non-empty.
• Do not combine --project with --name that already contains @; this raises a usage error.
• If neither --project nor @project is provided, pmr logs a warning because some environments require project tagging to launch instances.

For Ai2 users, valid project names are listed here:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RphTD4MQDidyMAIv5J6D3wyJndj0oGcAc3hXk3CPC4w

Commands

Cluster Management

create - Launch EC2 instances

pmr create --name mycluster --number 5 --instance-type i4i.2xlarge

# With explicit project flag
pmr create --name mycluster --project my-ai2-project --number 5

# Equivalent inline project syntax
pmr create --name mycluster@my-ai2-project --number 5

# Options:
#   -n, --name          Cluster name (required)
#   -p, --project       Ai2 project name (or specify as name@project)
#   -N, --number        Number of instances (default: 1)
#   -t, --instance-type EC2 instance type (default: i4i.xlarge)
#   -r, --region        AWS region (default: us-east-1)
#   -a, --ami-id        Custom AMI ID (default: latest Amazon Linux 2023 AMI from SSM)
#   -d, --detach        Don't wait for instances to be ready
#   -j, --parallelism   Max concurrent instance creations
#   --zone              Availability zone
#   --storage-type      EBS volume type (gp3, gp2, io1, io2, io2e, st1, sc1)
#   --storage-size      Root volume size in GB
#   --storage-iops      IOPS for the root volume

list - Show cluster instances

pmr list --name mycluster

# Output includes: instance ID, name, type, state, IP, status checks, tags

terminate - Destroy instances

pmr terminate --name mycluster

# Terminate specific instances only:
pmr terminate --name mycluster -i i-abc123 -i i-def456

# Cap concurrent termination requests
pmr terminate --name mycluster --parallelism 4

pause / resume - Stop and start instances

pmr pause --name mycluster    # Stop instances (preserves EBS)
pmr resume --name mycluster   # Start stopped instances

# Control stop/start concurrency
pmr pause --name mycluster --parallelism 8
pmr resume --name mycluster --parallelism 8

wait - Wait for instances to be ready

Polls instance status until all instances are running and passing health checks. Optionally runs a readiness command via SSH on each instance.

# Wait for all instances to be healthy
pmr wait --name mycluster

# Wait with a custom readiness check
pmr wait --name mycluster --command "test -f /tmp/ready"

# Wait with a timeout and custom poll interval
pmr wait --name mycluster --timeout 300 --poll-interval 15

# Options:
#   --poll-interval     Seconds between status checks (default: 10)
#   -T, --timeout       Timeout in seconds (default: wait indefinitely)
#   -c, --command       Command that must exit 0 for instance to be considered ready
#   -s, --script        Script that must exit 0 for instance to be considered ready

ssh - Connect to an instance

Opens an interactive SSH session to an instance. If multiple instances match, presents a selection menu.

# SSH into an instance (interactive selection if multiple match)
pmr ssh --name mycluster

# SSH into a specific instance
pmr ssh --name mycluster -i i-abc123

version - Print version

pmr version

Command Execution

run - Execute commands on instances

# Run a command
pmr run --name mycluster --command "df -h"

# Run a script
pmr run --name mycluster --script ./my-script.sh

# Run in background (detached)
pmr run --name mycluster --command "long-running-job.sh" --detach

# Auto-terminate after command completes
pmr run --name mycluster --command "./job.sh" --spindown

# Run with a timeout
pmr run --name mycluster --command "df -h" --timeout 60

# Run as a different user
pmr run --name mycluster --command "whoami" --instance-username ubuntu

# Cap concurrent command execution
pmr run --name mycluster --command "df -h" --parallelism 4

run requires exactly one of --command or --script.

map - Distribute scripts across instances

Distributes scripts evenly across all instances and runs them in parallel. map expects --script to point to a directory containing executable files.

# Create scripts directory with executable scripts
ls scripts/
# job_001.sh  job_002.sh  job_003.sh  job_004.sh  job_005.sh

# Distribute and run across cluster
pmr map --name mycluster --script scripts/

# Scripts are shuffled, distributed evenly, and executed in detached screen sessions.
# Each instance gets a run_all.sh that runs its assigned scripts sequentially,
# with progress logged to run_all.log.

# Stop instances after their scripts complete
pmr map --name mycluster --script scripts/ --spindown

Instance Setup

setup - Configure AWS credentials

Copies your AWS credentials to all instances in the cluster. Also installs GNU screen.

pmr setup --name mycluster

setup-d2tk - Install Dolma2 Toolkit

Sets up RAID drives, installs Rust, and builds datamap-rs and minhash-rs. Automatically runs setup first.

pmr setup-d2tk --name mycluster --detach

setup-dolma-python - Install Dolma Python

Installs Python 3.12, uv, and the dolma package. Automatically runs setup first.

pmr setup-dolma-python --name mycluster --detach

setup-decon - Install DECON toolkit

Sets up the DECON pipeline with Rust toolchain. Automatically runs setup first. Each instance receives its host index as PMR_HOST_INDEX for coordinated work.

pmr setup-decon --name mycluster --github-token ghp_xxx --detach

# Options:
#   -g, --github-token  GitHub personal access token for cloning private repos

Common Options

All commands decorated with common_cli_options accept these flags. Not every flag is used by every command, but they are accepted uniformly.

Option	Short	Description
--name	-n	Cluster name (required). You can encode project as name@project.
--project	-p	Ai2 project name (equivalent to using name@project)
--region	-r	AWS region (default: us-east-1)
--instance-id	-i	Target specific instance(s), repeatable
--ssh-key-path	-k	Path to SSH private key (auto-detected from ~/.ssh/)
--detach/--no-detach	-d/-nd	Run in background via screen
--parallelism	-j	Max concurrent workers for create, terminate, pause, resume, and run
--owner	-o	Owner tag for cost tracking (defaults to $USER)
--instance-type	-t	EC2 instance type (default: i4i.xlarge)
--number	-N	Number of instances to create (default: 1)
--ami-id	-a	Custom AMI ID
--timeout	-T	Timeout in seconds for command execution
--spindown/--no-spindown	-S/-NS	Self-terminate instance after command completes
--command	-c	Command to execute on instances
--script	-s	Path to script file or directory to execute
--instance-username	-u	SSH username (default: ec2-user)

How It Works

1. Instance Tagging: Instances are tagged with Project (cluster name), Contact (owner), and Tool (poormanray). If project is provided, ai2-project is also added.

2. SSH Key Management: Your local SSH key is automatically imported to EC2 when creating instances.

3. Remote Execution: Commands are executed over SSH using paramiko. Long-running commands use GNU screen for detached execution.

4. Script Distribution: The map command base64-encodes scripts, transfers them to instances, and executes them in parallel.

Examples

Data Processing Pipeline

# 1. Create a cluster
pmr create --name dataproc --number 10 --instance-type i4i.4xlarge

# 2. Wait for all instances to be ready
pmr wait --name dataproc

# 3. Set up the environment
pmr setup-dolma-python --name dataproc --detach

# 4. Distribute processing scripts
pmr map --name dataproc --script ./processing-jobs/

# 5. Monitor progress (SSH into an instance to check)
pmr ssh --name dataproc
# or check logs across all instances:
pmr run --name dataproc --command "tail -f ~/*/run_all.log"

# 6. Clean up
pmr terminate --name dataproc

Quick One-Off Command

# Create, run, and terminate in one go
pmr create --name quickjob --number 1
pmr run --name quickjob --command "./my-job.sh" --spindown
# Instance auto-terminates after job completes

License

Apache-2.0